Fighting discrimination and prejudice against ROMA people and their inclusion in education and employment is one of the most important strategic goals of EU. In order to achieve this goal, the collaboration of organizations at regional and national level is quite necessary.

This was the framework of the Push Education Event against discrimination entitled:

«Fighting discrimination and prevention of ROMA in education – Strategies, methodologies & tools».

implemented by the Institute of Entrepreneurship Development in cooperation with the Municipality of Larissa on Wednesday, 14 June 2017, in Chatzigiannio Cultural Municipality Center within the framework of the project PAL – “Fighting discrimination and anti-Gypsyism in education and employment in EU”.

During the event, a thorough presentation of the project’s PAL outcomes, tools and methodologies that support the inclusion of ROMA people in education took place. Specifically, IED presented the training toolkit that was developed within the project, aiming at providing tools and resources that fight discrimination and support Roma integration and the implementation of national Roma inclusion strategies in the fields of education and employment. The toolkit is divided into two parts. The first part, called Education Toolkit, consists of a compilation of issues related to education, and is aimed at helping low-skilled Roma people return to the education system to improve their qualifications, or improving Roma children’s performance at school so as to prevent them from dropping out. The Training Toolkit covers a total of 36 topics developed within the framework of Workstreams 2.3, 3.1, and 3.3 of the PAL Project; they are based on research studies, awareness raising campaigns, conferences, and the development and implementation of training programmes for Roma as well as for trainers working with Roma.

Moreover, during the event several presentations on the topics below took place:

• ROMA and the socio-economic environment in the city of Larissa: activities of the Municipality ROMA Supporting Center
• Inclusion of ROMA children in education – the experience and the conclusions of the national project “Education of ROMA children”
• Protection of ROMA’s rights in Europe

The main conclusions of the event can be summarized as following:

• There is a big ROMA community in the city of Larissa, which highlights the importance of designing and implementing supportive strategies and activities for their social inclusion.
• The main channels to achieve ROMA social inclusion are education and employment.
• Specifically for ROMA inclusion in education, PAL project has a lot supportive tools and methodologies to offer.